


delayed

by gly13



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Strangers, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gly13/pseuds/gly13
Summary: Jaehyun falls in love with a stranger on a subway platform.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	delayed

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: i have so many things i need to write and do and this is not one of them 
> 
> i hope you enjoy :))

Jaehyun’s train is just wind by the time he makes it onto the platform.

He stares at afterimages of tail lights, the longing of home palpable as fast, cold air sweeps through his hair. It’s mocking, almost. The way it rifles through his clothing, as though urging him to follow along into the tunnel of blackness through which lies his home.

His eyes move to the electronic board hanging above his head, squinting slightly at how its brightness cuts through the misty yellow light of the platform. Orange lights bend into short, fragmented lines to spell out  _ DELAYED  _ next to his destination.

There’s another train due before his, though not for another fifteen minutes. And his own one is an unspecified amount of time away, somewhere too far and unknown. Weaving its way through the labyrinth of the underground. And the train he was meant to get, its position is all-too-well known. Right on time. Just out of reach.

The adrenaline from his sprint down the stairs and through turnstiles is gone like the puppet strings holding him up have been cut. And then it is only exhaustion.

It feeds into his bones, floods into his lungs, and drains into his limbs until it registers only as an ache. A deadweight on his shoulders. He glances around the platform, looking for a place to sit and perhaps his only drop of luck is that he is spoilt for choice.

The platform is empty. Bathed in sickly pale yellow, thick with something that is not quite smoke but is close. Either end of the platform, where the wall rounds off and the track devolves into darkness, is unfathomably void. Gaping. 

There’s no train, but Jaehyun feels shivers up his spine as though one has just passed.

He starts on his way over to one of the uncomfortable metal seats. Dull greys that wouldn’t reflect in the brightest of lights, let alone the dimness of an empty platform. It is like walking through a damp, coloured fog, wading through a dream.

He’s on the other side of the arrival board now, and he looks up at it as though something might have changed in the last forty seconds. The hope in his chest barely takes its first breath before it is let down and deflates.

_ DELAYED _

He lowers his eyes again, because keeping them open and aware is draining. He pulls himself out of the bed he envisions in his mind and back onto the platform, where the biting cold of the outside seems to be making its way down stairwells and tunnels and secret cracks in bricks to prick at Jaehyun’s skin like an onslaught of frozen needles.

The platform isn’t empty. Not entirely.

There is a man. Standing pushed up against the curved wall of the platform. The clouds of light do not consume him, but rather rest delicately around him. Jaehyun isn’t sure how he ever missed him.

There is something surreal about the entire situation, so far removed from any sort of norm. There’s no set way to interact and the only barrier between the only two people on a usually overflowing platform is the peace on the man’s face.

Eyes closed. Long eyelashes fanning over eyebags just dark enough to be concerning. It’s difficult to make out everything clearly, but since the man has been spared from the haze of the poor lighting, Jaehyun can see how the concealer that had hidden them has since been rubbed away. He knows he’d find the remnants of the drug-store shade on the back of the man’s knuckles if he looked.

He wonders if exhaustion pulls at this man the same way it pulls at him. He wonders how the man has the strength to stand.

Lips moving along to the words of a song Jaehyun wishes he knew. Black wired earphones that Jaehyun traces to the smartphone in the man’s right hand. Two fingers of his left hand tap against his thigh, loose and relaxed. Jaehyun hopes he is as relaxed as he appears to be in that moment.

He wonders why he’s alone so late. He wonders where he’s going.

A threadbare white t-shirt hangs off of one shoulder, half-tucked into a pair of black jeans which are ripped more than they are intact, revealing pale skin. It’s past the threshold of artfully distressed. A lithe, slender frame curled into a poor posture. Jaehyun can see his collarbone and the veins on his forearm.

He wonders how the man isn’t cold, and pulls his own jacket tighter around himself.

The man feels both too real and too fantastical at once. A mystery that could never be unravelled by a stranger on a train platform. He is the factual and the fictional, all wrapped into one. Jaehyun isn’t quite sure when he stopped breathing.

The man leans his head back so that it is balancing against the wall, exposing his throat. He seems carefree. Or maybe just free. Jaehyun isn’t sure he could tell the difference. The man’s head sways very slightly as he continues to sing silently.

There is the barest hint of a smile on his face, lips upturning around a lyric Jaehyun doesn’t know.

It is enough to draw the exhaustion from his lungs along with his breath. Jaehyun wonders what he looks like when he smiles fully, when he laughs.

He feels the wind before he sees the train.

The man must, too, for his eyes open before it has fully stopped at the platform. His eyes are startlingly dark; void tunnels of their own. Large and round, they seem to take a second to focus before he registers the train.

He walks towards it slowly, gliding easily through the thick light. He settles on a seat on the side of the train closest to Jaehyun. The only passenger. He rests his head on the glass and his eyes slip shut again. He’s still singing.

Jaehyun watches him as the doors shut. He watches after him as the train leaves the platform, slowly at first and then too quickly. He watches as the man disappears through the tunnel and watches the afterimages of tail lights as they flit in and out of existence within the same breath.

The wind rushes past his ear once again, as if to tell him he’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written in a while so i apologise if this feels a little stilted. thought it might do me some good to just write whatever before i jumped into something bigger. also sorry for any typos i wrote this very quickly !
> 
> i really hoped you enjoyed this !! if you did please leave kudos and comments they make me so happy <333
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/whatisanult)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/whatisanult)


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